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Comment by bgentry | Hacker News Reader

55 House Democrats, including Pelosi, voted against the USA Rights Act amendment that would have substantially limited the surveillance against US citizens. 65 House Democrats ultimately voted in favor of this bill and giving the Trump admin more unchecked surveillance powers.

https://twitter.com/gzornick/status/951501089047764992 http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll016.xml

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From what I've seen, Pelosi pretty consistently votes for expansion of state surveillance and other aspects of the security apparatus. So this vote is entirely in line with her general voting record...

Pelosi and Feinstein are the worst when it comes to privacy law.

Which is something I find interesting since they are both Democrats from San Francisco - Pelosi(represents S.F, the 12th district) and Feinstein represents California but is born and bread S.F. and served as its' Mayor for a bit.

Personally I think both of them have been in office too long, what was progressive when they first took office is probably different from what it is now and the last town halls for both Feinstein and Pelosi were striking for how ossified and tone deaf they sounded.

I completely agree. They are career politicians and both completely out touch. There are 79 members of the US Congress who have been there for at least 20 years[1]

And if they weren't enough, the age average of them is fairly close to retirement age:

"The average age of Members of the House at the beginning of the 114th Congress was 57.0 years; of Senators, 61.0 years."[2]

[1] https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-18/79-members-congres...

[2] https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R43869.pdf

Feinstein was not a liberal (or a particularly) mayor. She profited handsomely from the assassinations of Milk and Moscone though. Then again, San Francisco is not a particularly liberal place even by Bay Area standards.

I think she was always seen as centrist. I agree the Milk/Moscone tragedy helped her career but she was also elected Mayor after that in 80's. And S.F in the 1980s was very much a liberal place.

> And S.F in the 1980s was very much a liberal place.

Ehhh. Richmond and Oakland, yes. Berkeley? No. San Francisco? No.

But they are all big-government statists and they all walk the same way when it comes to invading citizens' privacy. It was a bad law from the start, it will always be a bad law, and it tells you everything you need to know about our current government that they keep renewing this bad law.

And no, it's not a question of "if you have nothing to hide.." it's simple, basic reality--you are not free in any sense of the word if you have East-German type surveillance up your ass 24/7.

Every time this comes up, I'm again surprised how many people expect that Democrats will somehow have better policy for privacy.

Folks, it ain't so. The Democrats won't protect us in this regard any more than the Republicans will.

The parent comment literally shows that Democrats protect us for privacy more than Republicans do.

125 Democrats voted to add privacy protections, 55 did not.

By Contrast

58 Republicans voted to add privacy protections, 178 did not.

By definition, that means Democrats were better about privacy protections.

Stop peddling this both-parties-are-the-same nonsense. Its amazing this can even be said with a straight face during the Trump administration.

The last President was a Democrat and he sure didn't care about American's Privacy even though he used it on his campaign trail to get elected... Please don't act like _only_ Republicans do this...

From my comment down thread

>Unfortunately Obama almost quadrupled funding to these agencies[1]. Throughout his administration he allowed the Alphabet boys to try and steal more american's data without warrants (See FBI v Apple and the FBI attempting to get access to your browser history with out warrants)[2][3]. Obama even EXPANDED surveillance on his way out of office[4]. Obama also said he was pro whistle blowers we all know what happened to Chelsea.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/surveillance-in-the-obama-era-1... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2016/03/29/apple-vs-fbi-all-you-need-to... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-w... [4] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/01/obama-expands-surveill...

>Please don't act like _only_ Republicans do this...

Parent didn't say _only_ Republicans do this. Parent said Republicans do it more. They backed it up with proof (Congress voting record).

The FBI did not need a warrant to search that phone. The owner (the shooter's employer) gave them permission.

Obama didn't expand surveillance on his way out (several surveillance programs stopped under his watch, including both email and phone metadata collection). You're confusing an authorization to share information, which allowed a more thorough investigation into Russian meddling, with authorization to collect new data.

Your first link doesn't support your claim that Obama quadrupled funding because that didn't happen. https://fas.org/irp/budget/

And we all know that Obama released Manning over the objections of our current President.

You're confusing an excuse with a reason.

    Obama also said he was pro whistle blowers
    we all know what happened to Chelsea.

Obama commuted her sentence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelsea_Manning#Commutation

Do you remember how she was treated during her 7 year stay in prison?

I am sure it will be easy for her to explain "Violating the Espionage Act, stealing government property, violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, multiple counts of disobeying orders" on her job application.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-mannin...

There is a nuance here.

The Dems are better. They are better than republicans on this, but they certainly aren't good enough. That is the unfortunate part. But if you definitely want a better chance for civil liberties, voting for R's will hurt you worse than if you vote for D's, significantly so.

But if you definitely want a better chance for civil liberties, voting for R's will hurt you worse than if you vote for D's

I suppose that depends which civil liberties are more important to you. You'll find that Democrats are pretty awful if you value your right to self-defense, or if you don't think the government should be able to use eminent domain to take your property and give it to a wealthy supporter.

Some of the details may be different, but they're both different sides of the same coin. I don't see that one side is significantly better than the other overall.

Chelsea Manning seems to agree that the Democrats are better, too. Otherwise, I don't think she'd be running for Senate as one: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/chelsea-manning-files-us-...

I think you're missing the bigger picture. I think that for most of these politicians, it's really not about the issue itself (privacy in this case). It's about gaining power for your own party and removing power from the opposing party. Of course the Democrats are likely to vote against a bill that gives a Republican administration more power. And of course the Republicans are likely to vote for a bill that gives a Republican administration more power. That's what I see happening here.

Democrats had plenty of opportunity to strengthen privacy laws during the previous administration, but they didn't. Instead they strengthened the surveillance powers of the government. Now that a Republican controls the executive branch and all of these agencies, they want those powers weakened.

The US is experiencing the terrible pitfalls of a two-party system, just as the founding fathers warned. Instead of making progress, the parties mostly just fight each other, at our expense.

This is really true. How many times have you seen a party vote against an issue, only to turn around and vote for it it's their own party leadership leading the charge?

Oh please. Nitpick much? The party line in both parties was anti-privacy. Yes, there are more good apples in the bunch on the left side of the fence. The GP’s point still stands. Your reply comes across as very defensive and in denial. While technically correct, it is absolutely dishonest to try and portray the Democratic Party as a whole as actually giving a damn about this issue.

Both parties are the same in that in neither case should "party" be taken as sufficient evidence of someone being worthy of office. It would improve the quality of your votes if you ignored party entirely and forced yourself to find out what your representatives actually believed.

It doesn't matter what they believe. What matters is the power structure and incentives/disincentives to which they are subject once they have the job.

Regardless of what they believe, a politician's first priority is reelection, and it is partisan campaign committees that hold the reigns to the resources required for that. Even if you are independently wealthy and can finance your own campaign, you can't accomplish anything in office if you get ostracized by everyone who doesn't have that luxury.

Cooperate with the cartel leadership, or you'll be denied funding, voter data, and committee seats.

Doesn't matter. US political system only has 2 parties.

If you don't like blacks, browns and gays but DO like privacy were do you go? Exactly. There is no alternative to the Republicans.

If the US had 15 parties in Congress the game would be a LOT more interesting. Half of America has no choice to support Trump because the alternative is literally Satan.

So here we are: the endless stalemate.

> US political system only has 2 parties.

More accurately, the US electoral system supports only two competitive parties at a time; the US political system has several dozen political parties.

Neither the Democratic party nor the Republican party are monolithic. This is an issue where party affiliation isn't as predictive of behavior as some others, but there clearly are a lot of politicians who have strong opinions about surveillance. Just because those differences don't exactly fall along party lines doesn't mean that Democrats and Republicans are all the same.

I don't have much faith in the Democratic party as an institution to protect privacy, but many Democrats are trying to do so.

Sure democrats are not perfect on this, but they are still as good/slightly better than republicans which are a shitshow on more or less every issue.

One of the reasons democrats feel able to be horrible here is that there is just no alternative.

Not sure why this is downvoted.

What was the post-Obama efforts to dismantle the wire tapping program that Bush had put in place w/ the perceived powers of the executive? That's a serious question, since I don't really know history behind it.

There was no effort to dismantle the wiretapping...

* Bush implemented surveillance of citizens in response to 9/11

* Obama continued to support this program after it was revealed by Edward Snowden

* Now there's Trump

Personally, this was one of my biggest disappointments from the Obama administration. Before he became president, he was critical of the Patriot Act and seemed legitimately concerned[0]. After election he signed a four year renewal[1].

[0]: http://obamaspeeches.com/041-The-PATRIOT-Act-Obama-Speech.ht...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_on_mass_surveilla...

This has to be my number one gripe with Obama. I was so for him repealing the Bush Era Surveillance. I wanted more checks and balances. I wanted the secret courts to be dismantled.

Unfortunately Obama almost quadrupled funding to these agencies[1]. Throughout his administration he allowed the Alphabet boys to try and steal more american's data without warrants (See FBI v Apple and the FBI attempting to get access to your browser history with out warrants)[2][3]. Obama even EXPANDED surevellience on his way out of office[4]. Obama also said he was pro whistle blowers we all know what happened to Chelsea.

Let's not even get into the fact that he dropped a bomb on average every 20 minutes of his presidency. The is just 2016[5]

For better or worse, I can imagine that once you become POTUS and see all of the information it becomes very hard to stand by your privacy principles. This is by no means giving a pass to anyone, and I'd like to think I'd pick privacy every day of the week, but I'm also human. If I was POTUS I may end up doing everything in my power to avoid another attack on the US, no matter how unlikely.

Something to ponder.

I think the other part is that after lightening surveillance any terrorist attack that gets through will be used as a political cudgel no matter what to show that you were soft on terrorism. This felt kind of inevitable in the jingoistic atmosphere when the Patriot Act first passed.

Yeah. I'm so disappointed every time I watch this video of candidate Obama debating president Obama on government surveillance... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BmdovYztH8

Your Twitter link shows my representative voted No and your house.gov link says my representative voted Yes. People may want to double check your work here.

Edit: your house.gov link is in fact wrong. This is the correct link. http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll014.xml

Edit: your house.gov link is in fact wrong. This is the correct link. http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll014.xml

My Twitter link shows Dems who voted against the USA Rights amendment, and my house.gov link is for the bill itself. It is possible (and in fact likely) that a rep who voted no on the amendment would support the bill without it.

Your house.gov link is for the amendment, so it should reflect the same votes as the image in the tweet.

The twitter link discusses no votes on the Amash amendment. Your house link is not the vote on the Amash amendment.

Maybe I worded my reply poorly, because that is exactly what I was trying to say. Let's try this again.

Dems who voted against the Amash/USA Rights amendment: https://twitter.com/gzornick/status/951501089047764992

All votes for the Amash/USA Rights amendment: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll014.xml

All votes on S. 139, aka the main bill: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll016.xml

Does anyone know if there is a place where representatives put their reasoning behind votes?

Not my representative, bu Justin Amash, an R from Michigan's 3rd District, posts the rationale for why he voted how he voted on most bills on Facebook.

To my knowledge, he's the only one that does it with any degree of regularity.

I don't agree with many of his other positions, but Congressman Amash deserves credit for consistently standing up to his party and fighting government surveillance.

You can contact them and ask. They're working for you, after all.

For the most part you'll just get a form letter with little to no information in it. It will also almost certainly be written by a staff member that has little to no experience with the policy matter in question.

Responding to a bunch of people individually doesn't scale, so that's not terribly unreasonable. Still, if you call, it does a couple of things 1) you do find out what they think about the issue 2) they know that their constituents care about the issue.

If there isn't one yet, there needs to be one. Our government needs to be made more transparent, and we deserve to know their train of thought for these incredible and large decisions.

If you somehow convince them to require it of themselves you'll just get page after page of disingenuous paffle.

And it'll be done by some intern. Same as when you write or call them now.

Is the clerk.house.gov link the right one? It has "BILL TITLE: Rapid DNA Act of 2017" on its header, doesn't sound like a surveillance law

I think so, it appears to be the primary bill that was discussed this morning: http://clerk.house.gov/floorsummary/floor.aspx?day=20180111&...

The Amash amendment was also to this bill.

Here is a pamphlet comparing S. 139 with the Amash/USA Rights Act Amendment: https://www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/ChartCompa...

That same document refers to S. 139 as the FISA Reauthorization Amendments Act.

More clarification from journalists who closely follow this topic: https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/951541344274649089

As we are discussing elsewhere, this is the vote on the Amash amendment, which is what people here are talking about.

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll014.xml

> Is the clerk.house.gov link the right one? It has "BILL TITLE: Rapid DNA Act of 2017" on its header, doesn't sound like a surveillance law?

First, it sounds like a genetic information surveillance law to me, but lots of laws have things other than their main focus (including reauths of other laws) tucked in.

Second, lots of laws have misleading titles; do “USA PATRIOT Act” and “USA FREEDOM Act” sound (other than knowing the actual content put under those titles included) like surveillance laws?

So, how do we know that it's the right one?

Also, it's quite conceivable that a government considers surveilance "patriotic" or necessary to defend "freedom", but I don't feel the same about "Rapid DNA".

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